Sunday, September 25, 2016

AC/DC bassist Cliff Williams announced his retirement from
the band with the conclusion of their recent Rock or Bust world tour.

And now AC/DC should break up.

Of course, they should have broken up when longtime vocalist
Brian Johnson was forced to retire due to hearing problems. Or they should have broken up when rhythm
guitarist and founding member, Malcolm Young, was diagnosed with dementia. Or
they should have broken up when Phil Rudd, the drummer on nearly all of their
classic albums, found himself in legal hot water for drug possession and
allegedly soliciting the services of a hit-man. Or maybe they should have broken
up decades ago when Bon Scott, the vocalist with whom they first found success,
died from asphyxiating on his own vomit after a drinking binge.

These are all things you'll hear coming from the peanut
gallery.

Rock fans are an opinionated bunch, aren't we? We always
have something to say about our favorite (and least favorite) bands, and we say
it loudly, regardless of our degree of knowledge or insight. Because of the
visceral qualities and intense impact of rock music, and the way we incorporate
it into our lives, fans feel a deep connection to musicians that they have
never met, and somehow feel qualified to pontificate about their art and
private lives.

I am frequently guilty of this myself. However, in the back
of my mind, I never really forget that I am full of crap.

Fans complain when a band breaks up, when a band doesn't
break up, when their new album isn't like their last one, and when their new
album is just a rehashing of their last one. Sometimes you can't win with these
people.

In the case of AC/DC, we are dealing with very specific, and
some quite tragic, circumstances. Just a

few years ago, what was considered the
"classic" lineup of the band (unless you prefer Bon Scott) was
completely intact. Now only lead guitarist Angus Young remains.

The first casualty was founding member Malcolm Young, rhythm
guitarist, co-writer of most of the band's material, and brother of Angus.
Since being diagnosed with dementia, he was reported as having a complete loss
of short term memory and unable to communicate. This is bad thing to happen to
a band mate, a worse thing to happen to a brother.

Brian Johnson's departure from the band due to hearing
problems (he was apparently warned by his doctor that another tour with the
band could result in total hearing loss) was another shock. Johnson had attributed
his hearing problem to car racing (who knew it got so loud in there?), and not
to decades of touring in a notably loud rock band. Still, the band replaced him
with Guns and Roses vocalist Axl Rose for their 2016 tour. Initial statements
from Johnson indicated that this was done very much against his will, and that
he was disappointed to be replaced before a second medical opinion declared his
hearing damage to be less severe than feared. He later made a statement
thanking his bandmates for their support. Quite a change of heart.

This reminded me of how Jon Anderson was unceremoniously
dismissed from Yes, the band he co-founded in 1968, while dealing with health
problems that prevented him from performing. Similarly, initial statements
expressed sadness, disappointment, and shock, only to be contradicted by later
statements in which he gave his support and approval to the rest of the band.
Was this another change of heart, or did someone get a call from the lawyers?

Perhaps this is baseless speculation (but as a rock fan,
that's what I do), but I have to wonder if Anderson and Johnson were approached
by management and cautioned again disparaging members of the band and damaging
the brand. Rock bands are also a business, after all.

This is the weird thing about bands. A lot bands started
with a bunch of kids from the neighborhood coming together, guys who knew each
other since they were twelve. These are often intense, volatile, and deeply
familial relationships. Bands are also a business. Even the smallest time music
ensemble requires management and at least one member with some business
acumen. The biggest bands are
organizations that employ dozens of people. Breaking up a band, or "dissolving
the partnership," often involves liquidating assets and can even include
severance packages for longtime employees. It must be weird being a top tier touring
act. You go from being a bunch of kids in a garage to being an organization
that is too big to fail. When fans say, "why don't they just quit?"
it doesn't take into consideration the future of the guy who has been on the
road crew for, say, the Rolling Stones, for the last twenty years.

The "classic" line-up in their last days

It also doesn't take into consideration the specialized
skill set that these guys have. I am pretty sure that Angus doesn't have his
carpentry business to go back to. If anything, his family business was rock and
roll. Angus and Malcolm's older brother George was a member of the seminal Australian
band the Easybeats, and co-wrote their classic hit "Friday on My
Mind" before devoting his time and energy to fostering his brothers' ambitions,
guiding the early career of AC/DC and producing their early albums.

Can you blame Angus if he entertains the notion of
continuing the band all by himself? If you had one entity in your life which
was your livelihood, your passion, and
the ultimate mechanism for preservation of your youth, wouldn't you hold onto
it as long as you could? (AC/DC for all of their integrity and strengths is a
band that refused to mature, just look at Angus' stage outfit. He wears the
same schoolboy uniform that he did four decades ago.)

So hold off on your judgment if Angus Young doesn't
immediately declare the end of AC/DC after the departure of Cliff Williams. AC/DC
is his life and his legacy. And he's been through a lot in the last few years.
On the other hand, it would hypocritical of me to tell legions of rock
enthusiasts to hold their tongues. It's not I ever tried to. At any rate, this
is just my opinion. I will probably have a completely contradictory one
tomorrow.

Monday, September 12, 2016

A week or so ago, I was going through my rather disorganized
collection of old, rare (and not so rare) live "bootleg" concert
recordings, and found myself compelled to dig out an old show of poet/punk
musician Jim Carroll from 1980. I hadn't listened to it in years, and given the
fact that I have been in a jazz/fusion and Italian prog rock kick of late, I
can't really say why I felt the need to bring it out now. The fact that it was
around the anniversary of his death (he was working at his desk when he died of
a heart attack on September 11th, 2009) did not occur to me. I don't
believe that there was any cosmic message, but it did make the timing seem
appropriate.

I was not a fan of Jim Carroll growing up. Like many my age,
my first awareness of him was tied to the film version of his teenage memoir, The Basketball Diaries, not that I ever
saw it. In fact, I had no desire to. I think my perception of Leo DiCaprio at
the time as being just some pretty boy had something to do with it. I also
recall that the movie came out five months after the death of one of classmates
from a heroin overdose, and I remember saying that I thought that the movie was
probably just a bunch of heroin chic bullshit, and the fact that the kid in
this movie was a junky didn't make him an artist. Apparently, the eighteen year
old version of me thought he was qualify to make these statements without
seeing the movie or reading any of the works by the real life artist. In
retrospect, and this is harder to admit, I think that as a depressed and angst
ridden adolescent, I probably didn't want to be shown up in that department.
What's more, I was probably envious of the gritty, urban experience that I was
denied by growing up in a small college town. In the end, I didn't see the
movie simply because everyone else was, and I never bothered to read his books
or poetry.

For all of these reasons, I was not thrilled when he took
the stage at the Bottom Line in New York in January of 2002. I had gone to see
Ray Manzarek, for whom he was opening, and in spite of my unjustified antipathy
to Carroll, I had arrived early enough so that I would see his opening set from
its start.

He took to the stage with a languid stroll that seemed like
the caricature of the aging street poet, but was natural and unapologetic in
his bearing, as if he knew no other way to move. He apologized for seeming
lethargic, claiming that he was sick and had taken some cold medicine before
the show (something I was not sure I believed). I don't remember what he said
next, but I remember that my first thought was that he was not as pretentious
as I imagined he would be. I wasn't quite in his corner yet, though.

That would take an additional ninety seconds.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of hyperbole. However, the
turnaround happened quickly enough that I remember being surprised with myself,
being aware even at that moment that my opinion went from active and deliberate
aversion to pure engagement and admiration in a bizarrely short period of time.

He launched into a performance that causally blended reminiscences
with distillations of short stories and articles that he had been commissioned
to write over the years, with the occasional poem sprinkled in. The delicately
jagged urban romance of his poetry presented a stark contrast to his humorous, sagacious,
and slightly self-effacing storytelling. His tales expressed a persona that was
sensitive, but tough; streetwise and resilient, but painfully aware of the
ridiculousness of modern life.

Telling the story of waking up to the sound of an intruder
in his apartment, and his measures to protect himself and his girlfriend, he
recalled a moment of petrified recognition of his situation, standing buck
naked in the middle of a dark room with a knife in his hand thinking, "but
what if he has a gun?" We laughed along with him as he described his chivalry
withering with his sudden attack of self-awareness.

He related how he was approached by some periodical or
another for a story about a "first time," and how they didn't like
the story that he proposed: The first time he watched a friend receive a high
colonic. The fact that he clearly was not above scatological humor endeared me
to him even more.

He launched into a story about how he accompanied a friend,
who apparently either lost a bet or couldn't resist a dare, to a clinic to
undergo a colon cleansing. "They take this shit really seriously," he
said apologetically.

He spared no details as he described the bucket of soldiers
figurine that his friend that his friend had swallowed as a child and emerged
in pristine condition from his bowels. "It was the machine gunner. That
one was my favorite," he said, lying down on the stage, getting into the
gunner's position, just in case we didn't know which one he was talking about.

Apparently that story didn't go over well with the
periodical in question.

The story they accepted was "the first time I killed a
deer." I cringed. I don't know why, but in spite of everything I had heard
over the past hour, I was anticipating some trite kind of coming of age hunting
story or some circle of life bullshit diatribe infused with machismo. Instead
he told the story of a weekend in the country with friends, with him as the
fish-out-of-water city boy, in the middle of the night unable to sleep because
of the oppressive sounds of nature, when he became overwhelmed by a blood
curdling bleating sound coming from the yard. As he and his friends eventually
all got out of their beds to investigate, they were horrified to find a family
of deer gathered around one of their young, impaled on the picket fence.
Apparently, they had all leapt the fence, and the baby fawn didn't clear it.
It's cries of agony ripped into the air and burrowed into the minds of all of
the weekend guests. Carroll related how it somehow fell to him to do what was
decided must be done, to relieve the baby deer of his misery, how he was
furnished with a revolver, how he stroked by the fawn's head and cradled his
chin in his hands before pulling the trigger.

The room was silent. Clearly the rest of the audience was as
moved as I was. I sat there imagining
what he felt, the confusion of reconciling a violent act, willfully committed
lovingly, and feeling shame and guilt for doing the right thing. By this time,
any preconceived notions I had harbored about this artist had been utterly
obliterated.

He concluded his set with a recitation of a few more poems,
now joined on stage by Manzarek
accompanying him on piano. I was never one for poetry readings, but I
listened intensely, now caring deeply about what he had to say.

After that Manzarek took the stage for his "set"
which consisted of him playing solo piano versions of Doors songs interspersed
with reading passages from his new novel, The Poet in Exile. The book told the
story of musician named “Roy,” who had played keyboards in a seminal 60s rock
band, and embarks on a journey to seek “The Poet,” his former lead singer, who
had seemingly died decades before but was in fact living on an island somewhere.
It was too sad to watch. My friend and I left during one of the musical
interludes. (I wrote more in detail about that experience here.)

Carroll in his early 80s punk rock heyday

So basically, I went to see Manzarek, and by
accident I discovered Jim Carroll, who I was predisposed to dislike. It was a
beautiful bit of serendipity and those little confluences are the things I love
about living in New York City (and one of the reasons I miss The Bottom Line, a
truly unique place, but that's another story). And although I never did go out
and read The Basketball Diaries, that evening proved to be a very special one
for me, and I feel fortunate that happenstance put me in the room with a great
American artist. I am glad that in spite of my preconceptions, I was able to
have an open mind and appreciate that moment. And now, seven years after his death,
I think how lucky I was to have my mind changed while he was still alive, and I
was able to experience his artistry in person.